BRENDA IIJIMA

Raw Tongues

Military rations consist of what precisely

                                 anatomy fibrous dietary

Do you eat the dust of the desert the suds of the showers soap calcium silica sandstone chalk lime residual viscous We pray for safe travel Mission accomplished Boys and girls you come home soon Fat turkey waiting

                fishing in a toxic stream

Agent Orange replaced by spent uranium thick, amorphous carbon, diamond or rawhide steering west Graphite condition of air diamond intensity of sun coal combusts in the heat chamber Light the allotrope stove What were once orchards of peach orchards of dates orchards of olives What was once an oasis of roses roses Rocky outcrop hidden there sons and daughters tetrahedrally Secular not desert Fat boy come out to play Dick’s submachine gun Jane’s fleet of tanks One death consumes numerous lives case in point the animals Blessed be the Civil

War is over Canon balls float in flowerboxes See the shine of the canons Pa what about petticoated iron command All the hex murders

Hog maw supper tiny hardscrabble town is how the historians describe us gesticulating the mean Weep and wail justifiable knife made from holy grail

Rev Tongues

Populous tongue tied and questionable or questioning

Days go along

                A media spews representation but we are our own description There are fires everywhere and the smoke is oblique incendiaries were it not for the appliances and these vehicles Scorched canvases as symbols of towns Clashed syntax The longest boardroom table waxing and waning

                Furs exchanged at the post were mainly raccoon, deerskins, bearskins and the valuable menues pelleteries plus beaver They want them dead and gone We’re in Kansas now or Nebraska... I’m behind a dense thicket of underbrush with my sister Cold windy November lightly falling rains The river

boulders are shiny and cold The river swollen A few drunken men lie around a fire laughing We think about stealing their tobacco but decide against it as the sun sends rays into the depth of trees I don’t want your medicine in this glass of water I don’t want your psychology floating in the Great Lakes These are

specters speaking Take this if you are feeling blue Take this if

you are feeling red Back into animal